A reader gives her reasons for hope in our civilizational crisis

Emily B. writes:

Reading your recent posts was one of the most satisfying and enjoyable experiences I’ve ever had on your site. I admire Steve Sailer very much, so I find it ironic that I said to myself that that post was one of the greatest you’ve ever written. You struck the right tone when criticizing a man, yet your manners didn’t get in the way of some of the most profound statements I’ve ever heard on liberalism. Then, right after that I read the post on weeding out the unfit and Dimitri’s story… I was in heaven.

Getting back to the thread on Sailer’s theory of white status competition, I do think, contra Bruce B., that Sailer has attributed his thinking on status theory to the influence of Tom Wolfe who in turn says he was influenced by Max Weber.

I think the only thing I can add is that I see much pessimism amongst conservatives for our children: our children will be turned into liberals, the peasants will outbreed us, etc. which I disagree with. I do believe in cycles. Particularly, I believe society conforms to the circular Deuteronomic cycle at least the way I was taught it: the people prosper, get sloppy and sin, forget God; the people hurt themselves because of their wicked ways, cry out to God; God helps and they get back on the narrow road and rebuild their lives with moral prudence; they reach a very good state and are thankful to God. This cycle, I believe, itself exists within a much larger wave where it follows a trajectory of going up, plateauing, falling, and crashing down like a ball gaining acceleration according to the laws of physics ensuing in destruction. Perhaps even creative construction. I tend to believe that history will judge the height of the Renaissance as our crest, but I’m not as confident in that belief as I am that we have been in the destruction phase. Further I think the rate and amount of decline conform to your theory on the phases of liberalism with radical liberalism causing destruction.

I think our situation is extremely analogous to Rome. They famously became sexual perverts and killed many of their infants due to exposure (some of which were rescued by the Christians and adopted). Rome also was importing many peasants and slaves for cheap labor. In America and the rest of the first world, the carnage of the unborn is on an industrial scale. In 2007, the destruction of babies being killed at 22 weeks gestation and older exceed our murder rate: 16,450 versus 15,707. They die in gruesome ways that the Romans wouldn’t be able to fathom, but probably are more akin to the suffering of people forced into the coliseum. Scissors plunged into heads, being torn from limb to limb, burning by salt. Father James Thornton says the following in his article, “Aspects of the Immigration Crisis” (he quotes you as well) with emphasis added:

In a portion of a very fine collection of essays by the Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset, published in English fifty years ago under the title Concord and Liberty, we read of the distress of the Roman statesman Cicero at the fact that his country, his beloved Rome, was sunk deeply into crisis—a deadly crisis as it turned out—and that the way of life which all Romans had for centuries taken for granted as part of the established order of the universe was crumbling and would soon be a mere accumulation of memories. Among these memories, of course, were Roman liberty and the famed Roman republican system. Cicero gave expression to the belief that something deeper was at the root of Roman vexations, something that made the crisis through which he was living different from that experienced in earlier upheavals. The very foundations of Roman existence, as they had always been understood, were threatened. As Ortega y Gasset put it, “What [Cicero] beheld was not merely a struggle … within the human setting that from time immemorial had been the Roman commonwealth, but the total destruction of that community.”

Cicero noted that in the past Romans often disagreed, even disagreed strongly. But these had been clashes among members of a large family, so to speak, among friends. Adversaries in political disputes were not deadly enemies, and friendship endured beneath the surface. “A contest between friends, not a quarrel between enemies, is called a disagreement,” wrote Cicero. This was so because, though they disputed with one another over transitory issues, at bottom all agreed on the fundamentals: beliefs about life, about the universe, about religion, about moral norms, about legal principles, and so forth. This agreement about the fundamentals, even among adversaries, Cicero called concordia or “concord.” Under all non-despotic forms of government, concord—agreement on the fundamentals—is obviously an essential. The absence of concord among Romans of Cicero’s time, says Ortega y Gasset, meant that the inward structure of ancient Roman life had been fractured beyond repair.

[end of quotation.]

So, here is where I depart from other Conservatives. The liberals are trying to pervert our children and have us suffer from benign neglect in the quest for their egalitarian Utopia (white women being killed by primitives; lowering standard of living due to wealth and power redistribution; etc.), but ultimately, it is they who are dying. Liberal whites are committing suicide and replacing themselves with primitives. They aren’t going gentle into that good night, however.

The Christians were persecuted in Rome, but they emerged in the end and rebuilt the West from the ashes of Rome. So it will be with us.

Also, see Steve Sailer’s table of white fertility in 2002 by state. Only Idaho, Alaska, and Utah exceeded the replacement level of 2.1.

LA replies:

Thank you very much.

On biblical cycles, it is particularly in the Book of Judges that Israel’s relationship with God is portrayed as a series of ups and downs.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 25, 2008 10:39 AM | Send